


love the way you hurt me, lady

by themosthappy



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:24:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3685143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themosthappy/pseuds/themosthappy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she blows her cigarette smoke directly into your face, brimming with disrespect. her expression says she doesn't care.</p>
<p>(this, you come to learn, is pretty much a summary of your relationship).</p>
            </blockquote>





	love the way you hurt me, lady

You're just a petty little thief, but Cinder is Cinder. 

She found you one day on the street, curled up in an alley, and offered you a hand.

“I saw you pilfer that guy's wallet earlier,” she'd said, by way of explanation. You'd studied her red nail polish with renewed interest. “I'm Cinder. Wanna break the system?”

And that had been enough to sell you on Cinder Fall. After all, the system took you from your crackhead mom, shook you up for eighteen years and spit you out. You wouldn't mind kicking it in the teeth a couple times, which is pretty much your job now. You think you put up a pretty good fight for a lackey without papers, but you'd be nothing without the boss.

It makes sense that you feel the way you do about her. She took your shitty street life and turned you into a protegee, her protegee. She made you, she owns you. You were nothing before Cinder.

You work for her now, typing away codes when Mercury can't make it in, giving out orders to the subordinates, doing the jobs that she can't quite manage herself, and it's busy and exhausting but it's refreshing to be useful. To have connections, clean clothes, a place to sleep. And maybe it's hero worship, the way you feel about her. Maybe it's toxic, this thing between you, but the way she looks in a towel after a shower makes it all worth it.

“This hotel's water pressure is shit,” she drawls at you, frowning, and you laugh even though it's not funny.

-

“Damn, you're smitten,” Mercury tells you while Cinder is out, and you throw a pillow at him. He grins and it's infuriating, just like everything else about him.

“Shut up and do your damn job.”

-

Her mouth tastes like ash, and you think that's pretty fitting.

-

You learn she's been fucking Torchwick for four years and something in your breaks a little bit, but you're fine. It's Cinder. She's a goddamn shitting femme fatale in real life, of course she's going to be fucking Torchwick. Him and half the state, how else would you get anything done? If Cinder's cunt is what's getting this operation through then fine. Fine, fine. It's not like it changes anything.

Her eyes don't glow in the dark but they might as well. You can feel her watching you in the pitch black of the room that night, her hand gently curled around your throat. Her feet are freezing, and she pushes them up against your legs so she can watch you shiver. You tighten your grip on her waist.

“You're not angry at me, are you, darling?” she asks, and you know she can feel you swallow. You feel like prey.

“Never. Never ever,” you say, like a child.

Her laugh is filled with smoke, and her kiss feels like a burning building. You gasp into her mouth, your fingers pulling at her hair, and she lets you. She lets you, you are nothing and Cinder is everything. Cinder will save the world, you just know it.

-

Cinder comes into your room one day and looks at you funny. You try to ignore it the best you can, because it's none of your business, you're just lucky to be here and anyway you're busy, but she crawls up on the bed and steals all your breath. Her hand grips your chin, not harsh, and turns you to look her in the eye.

She's gorgeous, hair tousled, eyes bright, lips chapped. You'll just rest in fucking pieces, thanks. Emerald, exit stage left.

“Do you love me, darling?” The million dollar question.

You struggle, vainly, against her thin fingers. “Fuck off, Cin. I'm busy,” you tell her, gesturing to the laptop resting on your knees. 

“Do you?” You stare at the floor, turned to stone all of a sudden, and she sighs. “Mercury told me. I didn't think so, and you can never believe a word out of that boy's mouth, but he was so sure and, well.”

Rage curls in you, and for some reason you think of Torchwick. “How is this anybody's business, what I feel? Because it's not. It's not like I matter.”

She looks at you with this weird fucking look, like a word you can't be bothered to think of because you're a rat, not a thesaurus. You go back to work with a huff.

(Pity, you realize later, stretched out on her chest while she sleeps. It was pity, and maybe a little bit of something else.)

-

She curls her fingers inside you and you inhale through your nose, feeling too much like you're burning from the inside out. The hotel room is hot enough for that, funnily enough.

You don't quite understand her, or why she's doing this, not so soon after a failed mission. Usually, after a failed mission, she'll spend days not even looking at you. It's not about you or her or anyone, you've come to learn: it's about something deeper that you can't quite understand. 

"You're a street rat," she says, so often, "that's alright, because you're mine. You don't have to understand. Just obey."

And so when she pushes you down onto the mattress, when she tells you to strip while she's pulling off her jeans, it's second nature. Just obey. Just fuck yourself while I watch, Emerald, it's alright.

“Cinder, please-”

She ignores you, leans down and noses the coarse stubble gathered between your legs, laps at your clit. Jolts of sensation curl in your belly, and it's all you can do not to yell. Instead, you make a strangled little noise, curling your free hand in her hair while the other thumbs at your nipple.

“Shh,” she hushes nonchalantly, sliding her fingers out and back in again with merciless rhythm, an easy job because you're soaked. Your toes curl in the mattress, sweat beading on your skin, and you roll your hips onto her digits with a loud moan. Cinder's eyes are blown wide, her gaze hungry, her mouth red and kiss swollen. Your heart hurts. You want her to sit on your face for a minimum of fifty years. 

You watch through a haze as her mouth slides down, still fucking you, and her tongue pushing into your wetness is all you've ever wanted.

“Come on, good girl,” she purrs into your slit, her fingers doing that little curl movement again, and you don't just shiver, you practically convulse.

-

Cinder is filled with bullet holes and she looks like fucking swiss cheese, all bloody and beaten, hissing like a cornered cat at the police. 

You fight off as many as you can, back to back with Mercury, before they overwhelm you. You go down with Cinder's name on your mouth and an empty gun in your hand.

-

In the hospital, they ask you question after question and you don't answer a damn one. 

A kind looking man comes in one afternoon, grey hair glinting and glasses too small for his face. He offers you a cupcake and laughs when you wolf it down, like any of this is funny at all. You eye his suit and think that he's never known what it is to be hungry. Either way, you don't answer his questions, but you appreciate the attempt at bribery. It's underhand, and you approve.

“When do I get to see Cinder?” You ask him, and the look on his face makes your heart squeeze.

“She's recovering from surgery at the moment. Your charges have been dropped on the grounds of your records, or lack thereof, but Cinder will be going to trial.” To jail, he doesn't say, but you hear it anyway.

His hand rests on your knee through the blanket, and it doesn't feel creepy, just comforting. He looks a little like Mercury, if you squint.

-

You learn later that he's a lawyer, and his name is Ozpin, and that it turns out Mercury's been screwing him for Cinder's sake. Or that's what he claims, anyway. The way he looks at the ground and scuffs his shoe says he's getting bent over a desk for a little more than just the boss, but you don't pry.

“Old guys, huh? You call him daddy in bed or what,” you ask, smirking, and he shoots you a look full of meanness.

“Shut up, we all know about your thing with Cinder.” Your stomach sinks like a stone, but you don't falter.

“Yeah, and you don't see me calling her mommy. Bet he buys you some nice jewelry, though.”

“Oh, get fucked.”

You can understand, in a way, and it's not like you didn't see it coming. You bump hips with him, and the smile he gives you is so pure. You wonder how many hearts he's stopped with it.

Cinder gets fifteen years in jail, and you spend two of them trying to find yourself. It's shit, you decide, so you bust up some important government bastards and this time, you go down laughing.

-

She looks shit in the orange uniform, and her scowl says she knows it, but you slip in beside her during lunch and nudge her shoulder like old friends. The look on her face, surprise and pleasure, is sweeter than any freedom the government could give you. The stolen kiss she drops on your mouth later that day just reaffirms your previous suspicions.

You'd follow this woman fucking anywhere.


End file.
